Monthly Meetings​Meetings take place on the second Wednesday of each month (except August and December) at St Mary's Church, Wallingford. Meetings are at 7.45pm for 8.00pm Parking is available nearby in the Waitrose car park - free at that time of the evening.Visitors welcome (£4)

2019 Programme

January 9 (Weds)David Beasley: 'Women at War'This presentation will show how much women contributed to the war effort during the First World War. Without their sacrifice the war would have lasted longer. The main theme will be the munition workers and Land Army. A direct comparison will be made with their contribution in Second World War. The presentation will consist of around 100 photographs, some never seen before!Our speaker lives in Crowmarsh Gifford, and is well known throughout southern Oxfordshire, with an in depth knowledge of the locality. David has written several local history books, all using his own research from photographs and postcards of the past.

February 13 (Weds)Dr Graham Twemlow: 'The Great British Poster Artists: The Golden Age of Posters in Britain'Poster art in Britain during the 1920s and 1930s was a thriving industry enabled by enlightened clients such as Shell-Mex, the London Underground, and the four railway companies. Many other organisations, including department stores such Bobby & Co, Derry & Toms and Heal’s followed this lead and advertised their products or services via illustrated posters. This talk will explore the works of the pioneers of British poster art – artists include Tom Purvis; E. McKnight Kauffer; Paul Nash; Graham Sutherland.Our speaker is a retired University academic. Graham writes and lectures on design history and decorative arts subjects. He is interested in all aspects of the applied arts, but with a particular passion for illustrated posters from the mid 19th Century to the mid 20th Century. An experienced speaker, he has given talks at venues such as the Royal Society of Arts, the Grolier Club, New York, Christie’s South Kensington, the River & Rowing Museum, and the Ashmolean Museum.

March 13 (Weds)Professor Gary Lock: 'Atlas of Hill Forts'For the first time the locations and details of all ancient hillforts in Britain and Ireland have been mapped and made available on a website. Ranging from well-preserved forts to those where only crop marks are left, information on 4147 sites is accessible to the public so they can discover details of the ancient sites they see in the countryside. As well as the research teams, members of the public and societies – ‘citizen scientists’ – collected data about the hillforts they visited, identifying and recording the characteristics of forts, which was then incorporated into the database by the team. Despite the name given to these monuments, not all hillforts are on hills, and not all were forts in the military sense. So what have we learnt about these intriguing and often majestic Iron Age monuments? Gary Lock, co-director of this award-winning project will guide us through the results.Our speaker is Emeritus Professor of Archaeology, University of Oxford. Gary has spoken to TWHAS previously, about his 'Hillforts of the Ridgeway' project, looking at the White Horse at Uffington and Alfred’s Castle.

April 10 (Weds)​Tony Hadland: 'The Turbulent Lifetime of Thomas Vachell'Thomas Vachell was the heir of an old Reading gentry family; his wife was a Reade from Abingdon. Thomas’s father suppressed the hugely wealthy Reading Abbey, yet Thomas doggedly stuck to ‘the old faith’. His story spans five monarchs and four changes of religion. He became the most fined man in Oxfordshire, his wealth was seized in a government raid and, as a result of ‘swimming against the tide’, he fell out with his wife. Thomas Vachell’s story illustrates some of the huge changes England went through in the Tudor and early Stuart era – and it has a fairly happy ending!Our speaker is a retired chartered building surveyor, information scientist and operational risk manager. Today, Tony is a historian, writer and broadcaster specialising in bicycle history and various aspects of local and family history. Since retiring the first time, he has been administrator of the Vale & Downland Museum and editor of Oxfordshire Family Historian.

May 8 (Weds)Rick Schulting: 'Bluestones and white bones: the origins of the people buried at Stonehenge'Stonehenge has long inspired the imagination. Much work has been done on understanding (or speculating on) how the stones themselves were moved, whence they came, and what the monument meant to its creators. Far less attention has been paid to those creators themselves. The cremated remains of more than 50 individuals were placed in the Aubrey Holes at Stonehenge, making it one of the largest Late Neolithic (ca. 3000-2500 BC) cemeteries known in Britain. The Aubrey Holes were excavated by Colonel Hawley in 1919-1926, who, unusually for the time, had the foresight to rebury the cremations on site, albeit commingled in a single pit. Nevertheless, bones of at least 25 separate individuals could still be identified. These were recently used for radiocarbon dating, and a small fragment of what was left over from that process was used for strontium isotope analysis. This is a method that provides insights into where people lived, following the adage that ‘you are where you ate’.Prof Rick Schulting of Oxford’s School of Archaeology will present the intriguing results of the strontium isotope analysis of the remains, which suggested there were strong connections between west Wales and Wessex, extending beyond the transportation of stones, to the movement of people, from a project that was recently nominated for Current Archaeology’s 2018 Research Project of the Year.

June 12 (Weds)Stephen Barker: ‘Oxfordshire in the British Civil Wars 1642-51’There are few places in the county with no connections to the Civil Wars. Oxfordshire played a significant part after Oxford became the Royalist capital in late 1642 and the county was on the frontline with parliamentary Buckinghamshire. The county’s story is that of King Charles, Prince Rupert, Cromwell, Fairfax, Waller as well as a number of women who played significant parts and whose stories are being widely told for the first time. Oxfordshire’s story is that of the battles at Chalgrove and Cropredy; of amazing castles that once stood at Wallingford and Banbury and of Cromwell’s raids in the Spring of 1645. This presentation will be fully illustrated, with personal accounts, archaeology and what can be seen today.Stephen Barker is an independent Heritage Advisor who works with a number of museums, universities, charities and other heritage organisations to design exhibitions and make funding applications on their behalf. He is currently working with the History Faculty, University of Oxford and the Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum. Stephen specialises in military history, particularly the First World War and British Civil Wars. He is a Trustee of the Bucks Military Museum Trust, a Museum Mentor and has worked at The Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum, Banbury Museum and for Oxfordshire Museum Services. He is the author of 'Lancashire's Forgotten Heroes - a history of the 8th East Lancs in the Great War.’

July 10 (Weds)Tim Porter: 'John Leland - A Tudor Traveller and what he saw'As TWHAS members will know, Tudor traveller John Leland is regarded as the father of local history. His extensive journeys round England and Wales were published in a series of books called the Itineraries. He described the towns and countryside he saw in some detail. One of his visits covered Berkshire, which contained the great castles of Windsor and Wallingford. Such eye witness evidence is invaluable. In this talk Tim Porter will look at John Leland in the context of his descriptions of the local area.Tim Porter is an itinerant lecturer, with two subject areas; music and the middle ages. Training originally in music, Tim worked as a composer in touring theatre during the 1970s and 80s; but his studies, researches and explorations of medieval Britain always developed alongside. Photography is another aspect of his work, and he's become well-known for the atmospheric and unusual slides which he uses. For him, context is the key - whether relating a mediaeval building to its underlying landscape, or linking a symphony to the social background of a great musician, Tim believes in the power of the wider picture, and those lively connections which bring a subject into the light.​~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Summer break ~ no TWHAS meeting in August ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Sept 11 (Weds)Paul Booth (Oxford Archaeology): 'Latest thinking on Roman Dorchester-on-Thames: from origins to demise'The training excavation run by Oxford Archaeology and the Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford, completed its tenth and final field season in the allotments at Dorchester in summer 2018. Although modest in scale this excavation has added evidence that contributes significantly to our understanding of the Roman town and has prompted consideration of wider questions of early and late Roman transitions in the immediately surrounding area. Aspects of these questions will be reviewed in the light of ongoing post-excavation analysis of the excavations.Our speaker, Paul Booth, is the Senior Project Manager with Oxford Archaeology, where his responsibilities include management of a wide range of projects both in the field and in post-excavation. His work covers most periods but his principal expertise and interest is in the Roman period in Britain, which includes specialist input on Roman pottery.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Winter break ~ no TWHAS meeting in December ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~​

Katharine Keats-Rohan is the TWHAS Speaker's secretary. If you have suggestions for future talks, please contact KatharineIf other local history societies would like to notify us of their events for possible inclusion (subject to space) in the monthly publication, TWHAS Now, then please send details to the TWHAS Now editor